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rirtTl<nnA«t 



^<A^i^yi_ti, 



THE SETTLEMENT 



OF 



SOUTHOLD. 

By George Rogers Howell. 



\ 



p 129 
.S74 H8 

Copy ^ 



■ 



SHE Settlement of §outhold. 



GEORGE EOGERS HOWELL. 



We liave received and read at this 
late date the accouut of the 
250th anniversary of the settle- 
ment of Southold in October, 1G40, 
or 1641, which was celebrated on the 
27th day of August, 189ii. It makes 
a handsome octavo of 220 pages, 
and aside from a few what we may 
charitably term errors, is a work 
creditable to all concerned But 
these errors are, as it happens, of 
vital importance if you have any 
care for a correct history of the 
town. It is well that the statement 
was made in the introduction that 
the 27th of August was selected for 
anniveisary diiy as a matter of 
convenience. It certainly repre 
sents nothing in the history of the 
settlement of Southold, for on the 
27th of August, 1640, not one of 
the settlers of the town was in the 
bounds of Yennicott. 

According to Trumbull and the 
historians Thompson, Wood, Lam 
bert, Hollister and Palfrey, who all 
followed Trumbull, the town was 
settled in October of that year. 

A continous clamor for an earlier 
date is a useless expenditure of zeal 
and nothing else, liepetition of 
what is false is neither fact, nor 
argument, nor good taste. I 
challenge the world to find evidence 
of a settlement of Southold bj' 
Europeans previous to October, 
164'. 

Now let us see what that careful 
historian, Mr. Charles B. Moore, 
says. To know Mr Moore was to 
love him. He was careful, tender 
of the truth, and I prized his friend 
ship beyond all expression But, 
like other men, he was not infalli- 
ble. He was also a lawyer, and in 
this case was retained by his native 
town, and his plea was special 



pleading, that of a lawyer making 
out a case, not of a judge balancing 
evidence. 

On p. 142, for instance, he says : 
"We have the notice that Rev. 
John Youngs was forbidden to sail 
from Great Y'armouth, the port of 
entry and departure for that region. 
This was dated 1 637, but may have 
occurred earlier." 

How could there be a mistake 
when the iransaction was entered 
in an official book of entries of 
passengers with continuous dates 
from year to year and from month 
to month, page after page ? The 
six entries previous to the one 
where it is recorded that Mr. John 
Youngs and his wife Joan and six 
children were forbidden to leave 
England was of the same date, May 
11, 1637, and the next following 
entry was dated May 12, 1637, and 
the record explicitly adds : "He 
went not from Yarmouth " But all 
the historians say that he did come 
ove)- in the summer of 1640. As he 
led the colony and is called the 
first settler, he certainly could not 
have been there previous to Sep- 
tember of that year There were 
five Englishmen in this country at 
that time, apparently of the same 
generation, scattered over New 
England including the Southold 
minister, by the name of John 
Young, or Youngs One of these 
was in Salem in 1637, and him Mr 
Moore has, without warrant and 
against fact, selected as the South 
hold leader (p. 145) The Salem 
John Young of 1637, however, died 
at CharlestownDec.29. 1672, accord 
ing to Savage, who traced his 
career, and the Southold pastor 
died Feb. 24. 1672. 

And now we have an instance of 



liow unsafe it is for a writer to 
trust to his memory for dates and 
things It will occasionally lead 
him to make statements very far 
from the truth — unintentionally, no 
doubt, but still none the less false, 
and misleading the innocent and 
uninformed reader Take this 
statement, for instance, on page 6 : 
''The Hon. Henry P Hedges was 
invited to address the meeting in 
the afternoon, as the representative 
of the sister town of Southampton, 
which is not greatly younger than 
Soutliold, having become organized 
and united to Connecticut in 1641 " 

Men and brethren, Southampton 
celebrated her 250th anniversary on 
June 12, 1890 — the anniversary of 
the second deed of sale of the land 
from Lord Sterling's agent, and Dr. 
Whitaker was present at that cele- 
bration And yet he appears to 
have forgotten this, and if his 
language, quoted above, means 
anything it conveys the impression 
that the town of Southampton was 
settled in 1644 And so anyone 
unacquainted with the facts would 
understand him 

Furthermore the town was settled 
in June, 1640 Governor John 
Winthrop, the careful and accurate 
historian of New England and a 
contemporaneous witness to the 
event, affirms it and the town 
rscords contain a paper dated in 
and at Southampton in the month 
of June, 1640 '-Not greatly 
younger than Southold ?" How 
could he publish such an absurdity? 
It is useless to quibble on the word 
"organized," so nearly synonymous 
with the word "settled," It was 
organized when it was settled. It 
had all the machinery of a munici- 
pality, such as laws, courts, church 
and school from the beginning in 
1640 The union with Connecticut 
did not give it any organization 
which it ha'l not before By that 
union an organized town went 
from an independency to a con- 
federacy ; it simply changed its 
political relation Well, the state 
ment was so astounding that I 
wrote to Dr. Whitaker, asking him 
who wrote the introduction to this 
book, which contains the paragraph 
quoted above I was told by him 
that it cam-^; from his pen Then I 
wrote again asking him what he 
meant by the statement To this 
he sent me the following explanation 
which needs another letter to ex 
plain : 



"Wliat you quote was written to give the 
reader iutorniation respectini; the preparations 
for the ci'lchratioti, just as (ithcr parts of the 
iiitroiluctiiin were. The intention was to say 
notliinj; specifically aliout the time at which 
fSoutlianipton was settled. IJy the revolution 
there in l(;(;4 Soutliampton was organized and 
united to Connecticut and so beeain'e an acquir- 
ed part of the United Colonies of New Kngland 
as Southold had become earlier througli Its 
union with New Haven. Thus Southampton, 
and Southold liecanu' organically related to 
each other. Hence the mention of tlie 
slgnifleant tiansaetion which nuide Southamp- 
ton a sister town of S'outhold. lam happy to 
give you the Information which yon request." 

I am sure I am grateful to re- 
ceive information But this "in- 
formation " varies widely from the 
statements of all the early New 
England historians What really 
did happen was this: New Haven 
bought and settled Southold (we 
say for the present) in October, 
1640 But Southold ceased to be a 
dependencj' to New Haven town 
within two or three years, for 
(Col Rec. of Ct. Vol.1, p Uo) at 
a General Court held at New 
Haven Oct 23, 1643, this language 
is used : " A.nd whereas Stainiorde, 
Guilforde, Yennicock, have upon 
the same foundations and engage 
ments entered into combination 
with vs, &c " Southold from at 
least 1643 to 1662 was, therefore, on 
a parity with these towns and New 
Haven, sending representatives to 
the latter town to General Court as 
Southampton did to Hartford of 
the Connecticut Colony from 1645 
to i662. when occvirred ttie union of 
the New Haven and the Connecticut 
Colonies In 1662 Southampton 
and Southold became " organically 
sister towns " of the same Colony 

But even when we have got the 
Doctor out of this muddle, how 
does the exjilanation explain ? I 
am afraid tliat as often as I see 
this preposterous claim of superior 
antiquity put forth for Southold 
the spirit within me will be stirred 
to rise and smite it with the truth 
It is a small matter, anyhow, but if 
a man attempts to wiite history 
let him be reatly to give up an old 
belief when truth demands it 

So far I have supposed that 
Southold was settled in October, 
1640, accepting the long line of 
historians who followed Trumbull 
But Trumbull wrote one hundred 
and fifty years after 1640, and niaj' 
be wrong himself Indeed Mr. 
William Wallace Tooker, of Sag 
Harbor, has made it quite i)robable, 
in an article of his in the Magazine 
of New England History for 
Januaiy, 1892, that it was not until 



October, 1641, that Southold was 
settled And after examining liis 
authorities I agree with his con- 
clusions But 1 did more Per 
plexed on all sides to learn the 
facts pertaining to the settlement 
of Southold, I turned to Dr 
AVhitaker's history of the town. I 
found there, to my amazement, a 
list of names to the number of one 
hundred and forty — the author 
says, but incorrectly, one hundred 
and thirty-eight — heads of families 
as the settlers of the town A 
mighty strong settlement ! — in fact 
unequalled by any settlement on 
these sUoi'es from 1620 to date 

They are very justly eulogized as 
the Puritan ancestors of the town. 
JStill I was so skeptical as to the 
numbers that I looked over the 
earliest rate list in the JState Li- 
brary — that of 1683 in the second 
volume of the Documentary His 
tory of the State Of the ninetj' 
family names in the one hundred 
and torty settlers of Whitaker we 
tind forty -one on this rate list of 
1663. Where are the missing forty 
nine ? Where ? Some of them 
not yet in Southold — some were 
transients and some were probably 
Servants. 

13 Lit we want something more 
accurate than this. Let us compare 
the list of Mr Whitaker with 
Moore's Index of Soutnold and tlie 
two volumes of the liecords of 
Southold in print We classify 
the llu names in various classes 
according to information derived 
fiom those two authorities of 
Muore and the Southold town 
records: 



(hisses, 
] Sons or grandsons of first settlers, 

iniuors or not born in 1G41 
2. Those wlio came between 1G50 and 1656 
.i. Tiiose WHO came later tiian 1656 

4. Transients or removed by 1657 

5. Silt mentioned by Moore or tiie Sonth- 
old records— no evidence of be.ng resi- 
dents 

6. Mentioned as being here in 1649 

7. Here in 1645 

«, I'irst liere in 1642 

ii. First mention of being here in 1641 

10. .Never residents 



Number in Whitalcer's list 140 

Male heads of families are 
generally considered the first 
settlers of towns, because for the 
most part they are responsible for 
the existence of the settlement. 
But taking the evidence of Mr. 
diaries B. Moore and the printed 
records of Southold themselves, 
we tind that we must reject forty- 
six, at the start as being t^liildren or 



yet unborn in the year 1641 This 
leaves us ninety-four adults. Now 
we must deduct classes 2, 3, 4 and 5 
to eliminate late comers This 
leaves eleven. I am responsible 
for the tenth class. I can account 
for four men on his list that never 
could have been residents They 
lived elsewhere. They are Benoni 
Flint, Jeremiah Meacham, George 
Miller and Francis Nicholls De- 
ducting these from the last remaiiir 
der, we have seven There were 
two or three transients who were 
here at least as early as 1649, per- 
haps earlier. So we will say the 
number of settlers safely to be 
reckoned is ten. How the " men 
in buckram " have dwindled ! But, 
then, we have saved ten. And 
that is about all there were in 
Southold in 1649 Perhaps some 
denizen of that village thinks such 
a statement almost sacrilegious or 
idiotic. Wait a bit. Look in the 
account of the anniversary, in the 
address of Mr. Moore, pages 131 
and 132, and notice the words of 
Secretary Van Tienhoven, written 
in 165U. He says : "The English 
of the colony of New Haven 
settled two villages at the bight of 
the aforesaid inland sea, about 
three leagues from the east point 
of said island : one called South- 
ampton, containing about ten or 
twelve houses ; the other Southold, 
about thirty houses." 

This was written in 1650 and on 
May 1", 1649, Southampton had 
twenty-nine male heads of families. 
At least four other men were liv ng 
there— Kev. Kobert Fordham, 
Tristram Hedges, William Barnes 
and Arthur Bostwick, who are not 
on the list of townsmen in that 
year. These families can all or 
nearly all be located as living in 
separate houses, each on its own 
homestead. So that Secretary Van 
Tienhoven was right in his 
figures, only he has given Sovitli 
hampton's number of houses to 
Southold and Southold's to South- 
ampton 

Now let us investigate the Jack- 
son and the Sunderland bogies. 
The printed records of the colony 
of Massachusetts Bay have the 
name of this same Richard Jackson 
living in Cambridge and a repre 
sentative at the General Court 
from that town in 16-57, 16:<8, 1639, 
1641, 1648, 1653 and 1661. As Mr 
William Wallace Tooker writes, 
Thomas Lechford, in his Note 



Book recently printed, saj's Jack 
son was residing in Cambridge up 
to Aug 7, 1641', and again ISept 21, 
1640. He got a deed of land in 
Hashamomock of date Aug. 15. 
1640. He was then under sentence 
of a fine imposed on May 22, 1639, 
and in trouble and disgust left the 
Massachusetts Colony for a short 
time until justice was done him. In 
September, 1640, his tine was re 
mitted, and in October he sold to 
Wetherby his land and what little 
log hut he may have constructed 
there in a month's residence. 
Wetherby was a sailor and his home 
the sea, and no evidence can be 
found of his personal residence on 
the Ja3kson shack for even a week. 
All this is no orderly organized 
settlement of Southold. 

Now as to Sunderland. Mr. 
Tooker shows that the first 
mention of Farrett's being in 
America was, according to Lech- 
ford, on June 7, 1639 Farrett says 
himself that Lion Gardiner's 
purchase of Gardiner's Island from 
the Indians, May 1". 163!', was 
previous to Farrett's coming to 
America. Sunderland obtained his 
deeds for Oyster Bay lands June 18, 
1640. There is no evidence that 
Sunderland ever held in fee an 
acre of land in Southold. Lechford 
mentions Sunderland as a resident 
of Newport, R I., on Aug. 20. 
16jtO. The Colonial records of 
Kliode Island also show that Sun- 



derland, with fifty-eight others, was 
admitted to be inhabitants of 
Aquidneck (the island of Rhode 
Island) on Oct 1, 1640. He may 
have stopped on the north shore of 
Southold a few days or a few 
weeks as the agent of Farrett to 
look out for his interests, but he 
never can be considered a resident, 
and, what is essential, is shown to 
be living elsewhere when he is 
needed as a settler in Southold. 

Now in all this we uttei-iy dis- 
claim all hostility to Southold, her 
people or her interests. We have 
none but the friendliest feeling 
toward them all. We are only in- 
terested in this matter as an his- 
torical question. I was as much 
surprised as any good loyal South- 
holder could be when, in 1865, I 
began to study the settlement of 
Southampton critically, and dis- 
covered that all the previous his 
torians had been wrong, because 
they had not seen the evidence 
which had come to light subsequent 
to thsir life and woriis I was the 
first, so far as I know, to find evi- 
dence tliat the settlement of this 
town antedated that ot Southold, 
and also the first to publish it, and 
this publication was in my history 
of Southampton. It is therefore on 
account of this interest in main- 
taining the truth that I have made 
a special study of these points 
again, and again come before the 
public. 



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BABYLON, N. Y. 

THE SIGNAL STEAM "print. 
1894. . 



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